Just wanted to see what kind of improvised tools you guys use for reloading..i.e., I use a old dentist pick to clean out my primer pockets. The dentist just gives me his old ones. I also use lab test tube trays for reloading blocks..these are just a couple of examples, anyone else have anything to pass on that we could use down the road.

I made a flat plate of steel, 1/4" thick and placed two SDB's on it opposing each other. I then welded another piece of 1/4" plate with a 'tee' on the bottom down the center underneath. I mounted this in the jaws a large vise that I had on my workbench. The vise swivels about 170° or so. When I want to load 45 instead of 38, all I need to do is swivel the vise around and I'm in business.
I have thought about making these and selling them, but there are too many different vises out there to cope with.

I put a short piece of plastic tube (a part of a plastic pen worked great for this by the way)into the hole on the bottom that the primers fall through in the SDB's. I then got a short piece on hose to slide over that plastic tube piece and aimed it at the trash can on the floor. The spent primers fall through the plastic tube, down through the hose and into the trash can. I never have to stop and inload the primer spent tray.

I took all of the allen screws off of the SDB's and bought some forster phillips head screws to replace them. It makes it much faster to switch tool heads when needed instead of using the angles allen wrenches. Plus, I don't need to find the exact right wrench as the screwdriver fits everything.

I also load shotshells and made a hopper that I can load 75 pounds of shot into at a time. It's on a pulley over my bench. I drop the hopper to the floor, load it up, raise it via the pulley to the overhead position, then put a safety chain on it. It's all mounted to the rafters in my garage. There is a connector that I made from electrical fittings that connect the hopper to the loader bottle (MEC 650). It really work well. No hassle trying to hold a bag of shot over the bottle and much less of loading the bottle.

One other thing that I did was mount some 1" stainless steel pipe below the bench that protrudee just enough to insert some 3/4" pipe into them. The 3/4" pipe has a plate welded to them to match the bolt pattern of the MEC 650's. I load for all gauges so switching is a breeze. I also don't need the spent primer tray as a trash can sits below the bench and catches all of the primers.

All of the MEC loaders also got the thumb scrw treatment. Any screw that I could replace with a thumb screw got them. No tools needed to adjust or remove any more, just the fingers.